Book Review: Genius Denied

I recently read the book Genius Denied: How to Stop Wasting our Brightest Young Minds, by Jan and Bob Davidson.  The authors demonstrate how American public schools are failing their brightest students; then they suggest how to fix the schools to address those problems.

The book begins by profiling a number of gifted students ("more able" in UK terms) and their struggles in the US public school system.  This part of the book is very depressing to read!

Interestingly, though homeschooling is obviously an excellent fit for gifted students--and many of the children profiled here did end up happily homeschooled--the authors don't promote homeschooling as a solution, instead focusing on how public and private schools can be fixed to address the needs of gifted children.

Still, I think this book is an excellent read for those who have begun to suspect that school settings are not always a good "fit" for children who fall outside the norm in some way. 

Children can be unusual learners for many reasons: perhaps because they are gifted (or "more able") and learn very quickly, or because they struggle with a learning disability, or because they are both gifted and struggle with a learning disability.  Or perhaps a child is just a late bloomer, and isn't ready to learn something at six, but would sail through it and quickly catch up to his peers if allowed to learn it at eight.  Or perhaps a child develops asynchronously, meaning he is at substantially different levels of ability in different subjects. 

Many of these unusual learners struggle in classrooms, where the instruction is usually, for obvious and practical reasons, geared towards the 'average' student.  The brightest students often struggle the most, however, because while most school districts in the US provide "special education" for children with learning disabilities, fewer districts have gifted education programs, and what programs there are are usually highly inadequate--an hour per week of "enrichment time," for example.  And when money runs short, gifted programming is usually the first to be cut.

I would recommend this book, especially to US parents.  You can see summarized excerpts of the book on the Davidsons' website, here (the rest of their site may also be of interest).